


The Two Of Us

by A_Candle_For_Sherlock



Series: The Way They Were [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Brief mention of suicide attempt, Gen, Greg Lestrade is a fantastic human being, Heartbreak, M/M, MI6, Mrs. Hudson's drug baron husband, Mycroft Being Mycroft, Mycroft loves his brother, Mycroft's POV, Sherlock in rehab, brief mention of self harm, mycroft being a little creepy and a lot possessive, overdose landing in a psych ward, sherlock in university, sherlock's backstory, surveillance footage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:58:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7671010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Candle_For_Sherlock/pseuds/A_Candle_For_Sherlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I taught him how to analyze them, comprehend their motivations. It was a game, at first. Then it became a question of survival--if he could predict them, he could escape them. My little brother, emotive, passionate and sensitive; pirate, dancer, lover of fairy tales.</p><p>I believe he saw university as a second chance. He wanted to step into their world. He joined the fencing team, the orchestra. He went to parties; called me drunk at two in the morning, asking me why no one would dance with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Two Of Us

My brother fell in love for the first time at nineteen years of age. He was entirely unprepared for it.  
  
Sherlock was in his second year at the university, alone. By then I was well into the agency. He might have begun his collegiate studies far younger, but our parents wanted to give him time, to offer him a chance at childhood, which was touchingly naive of them. We were neither of us common children. The term for what we were is "prodigies." Our minds retain and develop certain types of information instinctively at a speed impossible to the average untrained mind. We did not comprehend our agemates. We did not know why. They were loud and physical and contemptuous of theory; their minds were rooted in the immediate. There was a language of childhood between them which we could not speak.  
  
I am given to understand child prodigies are often isolated. Lonely, as they say.  
  
I taught him how to analyze them, observe and catalogue behavior, comprehend their motivations. It was a game, at first, a way for us to try to understand. Then it became a question of survival--if he could predict them, he could escape them. My little brother; emotive, passionate and sensitive; pirate, dancer, lover of fairy tales; consumed with the unusual, the fantastical and eccentric, the romantic and the macabre, with Saint-Saens and Ravel and Stevenson and Baryshnikov and Nicola Tesla. Drawn to men, not women, when the time came. He does not simply stand, or pace; to this day, he moves when relaxed or absorbed as though still dancing, spins, shifts heels and hips, flutters his hands. His voice was expressive, sibilant and soft, though he has not spoken in his natural tone to me in years, but drops it to the depths he reserves for concealing his emotions and unnerving those he does not trust.

Sherlock is explosive in his element. He is brilliant. He could be anything, except ordinary; that was and is impossible. He fit no one's conception of the well-developed British child. No public school boy's idea of a friend.  
  
They did try, but there was very little our parents could do, I think, to draw us out of the world we made for ourselves. After all, there were two of us. We were content to remain apart and observe. I should say, I was content. Some small attempts were made at introducing friendship. This was, of course, disastrous. I have not attempted to develop anything along those lines in decades. He has tried. More often than I would wish--I suspect, more often than he would have admitted to me, given the response he received, or the lack of one. He has a tendency toward something he would not name, but defends fiercely from me, even as it repeatedly fails him. Sentiment--romanticism. An inexplicable impulse toward connection with the wider world, with those who cannot comprehend his capabilities.  
  
University bewildered him. His teachers spoke of his genius, but they required him to sit quietly through reductive lectures, accept their preferred theories as the basis of his thoughts for the duration of their courses, write essays about things he had understood alone in our parents' library half a decade before. His classmates persisted in despising him at a time when he would have welcomed their companionship wholeheartedly. Despite all that, he was frighteningly optimistic. I believe he saw that school as a second chance. He wanted to step into their world. He wanted to see what they saw. He joined the fencing team, the orchestra. He went to parties; called me drunk at two in the morning, asking me why no one would dance with him.  
  
My brother fell in love with an ordinary boy.

  
I say boy. He was twenty years old. Well bred, active, pleasant. He owned a dog with the absurd name of Redbeard, a play on the pirate Bluebeard which my brother found amusing. They shared several classes. Sherlock spent one holiday visiting with his family in Wales. I advised against it. I could not have anticipated the exact circumstances of the falling out, but I knew it was inevitable. I did tell him that.  
  
It never occurred to him not to speak to his friend about the things he observed in their home. Even at twenty, Victor had retained an innocence regarding his father which my brother could not comprehend. Our loyalty to our parents has not been naive, nor self-deceptive, for a long time. My brother was keenly observant of humanity, but he did not understand the difference that lay between ourselves and others in family matters. The shock to him was that the boy would displace his sense of betrayal from his father onto Sherlock.

My brother could have been anything. At nineteen years of age, he began to skip class, he abandoned his biochemical research and dropped out of rehearsals. All in mourning for a person he had known for six months, a boy with a rugby scholarship and an average mind and no comprehension of what it had meant to have captured the interest of someone like my brother. Our parents were contacted by his fencing teacher after the third missed lesson, without my knowledge. They went down to visit him. We've never spoken of it, but I know without asking that they were worse than useless. They do try. Our mother would have cried and lectured, our father nodding earnestly, and Sherlock would have endured it as long as he could and then ordered them to leave him alone. Someone finally thought to inform me when Sherlock had lost his chair as first violinist in the student orchestra. Little as his classmates cared for him, apparently a few of the girls knew enough to realize I should be told. I was an active agent at the time. I used all I knew of of my superiors' psychology to obtain a fairly extended break. Two weeks, with a promise of high-risk field work to make it up on my return.  
  
He refused to see me. I waited three days in a hotel and then obtained the key to his room from his senior mentor. The mentor was conscientious, young, and unsure of the extent of his authority--not hard to intimidate with vague mention of consequences and my connections. I had learned by then how much more effective than anger a certain kind of calm is in persuasion. Whoever remains composed in an altercation is presumed to be in control.  
  
I don't know who it was who introduced Sherlock to cocaine. I would like to know. I did not have access to the resources I do now. I do not know whether he was using before he lost Victor, or whether someone took advantage of his misery. I lost my self-possession twenty minutes into the visit, when I first noted the evidence of his habit. I did not see it sooner because I was not looking for it; the abuse of his mind was the last thing I should have expected from Sherlock. I am ashamed to say that in my first surprise I did no better than our mother would have; I lectured, I raised my voice, I shamed him, I ordered him to pull himself together. When he proved unresponsive to this ridiculous treatment, I fell quiet. I had no precedent to fall back on; my little brother was impulsive, mercurial in his moods, but he had never been self-destructive. He had never wished me away, on his worst days.  
  
He left that night. I don't know how he managed it without waking me. I sleep lightly, but he has a cat's capacity for silent movement. He took a bag that had been sitting partially packed behind his bed when I arrived; perhaps anticipating me.  
  
I had a reciprocal relationship, professional, not personal, with an agent in digital surveillance. The use of government resources for a private search was of course unforgivable and had to be cautiously done. Between the hours of video she watched covertly, and the personal interviews I had to conduct with students and transport officials and the homeless population in the area, it took a full week to narrow down his location. He'd taken the Chiltern Railways to London--the first footage my colleague found of him--and disappeared into the worst of the city. And yet when I identified the abandoned flat he'd fled to I assumed I'd simply find him sulking there. I did realize he might well be high, drunk at the least.  
  
I found him dying.

  
I did not know what he had taken. I am not sure what I said to him, and I am very sure he does not remember. I called 999. His horror on recovering his faculties to find himself in hospital, and in restraints, was complete. I did not give him time to absorb the situation, nor was I gentle with him; I am afraid that my first words to him were a demand that he never do anything of the sort to me again (to me!--good God, the self-absorption of the young); but that if he did, he would at least leave me a list of what he'd taken so I could help him. The fact that I had been crying (as I said, I was young) would have been evident to him. He appeared startled enough to agree to my terms without argument.  
  
From that day he has never looked me full in the face with no shadow between us. I don't know whether it is me or himself that he blames. I cannot explicate his frame of mind at the time. I had no idea what to say to him. There was one attempt made to return him to his studies. Word had spread, in spite of me, about aspects of what had occurred, Victor and the abuse of cocaine in particular, and several of his classmates lacked the basic delicacy required to leave him alone--took enjoyment in his fall from grace, the genius boy proven mortal. They taunted him with it. I was told this by a distraught fencing partner after the relapse occurred. He'd taken an absurd dose, and while high, he'd harmed himself. Emergency services were called. By the time I arrived he'd already been committed to psychiatric care. The doctors would not allow me inside. They knew nothing of my brother, his need for privacy, the foods he can bear--he has always been sensitive to flavors and textures--the difficulties he has in falling asleep without silence and absolute darkness in the room, the importance of giving him the means to keep himself occupied. No one had thought to bring his books, or his music. He did not even have his coat with him when they took him in, and the hospital was kept five degrees cooler than my brother could comfortably bear in his shirtsleeves. They would give him no clear explanation of when he might be released.  
  
They sedated him repeatedly when he expressed his outrage and despair.  
  
I learned all of this after a week, when my efforts to gain entrance were finally acceded to. I had filed paperwork immediately to have him transferred to private care. Our parents were ready to pay for any facility I recommended. They have always relied on us to know what the other needs when they do not. Until Victor, we always had.  
  
The program did work. He was sober on his release, and quite clear on the necessity of continuing so if he wished to live long. He'd used the time with some profit, even, indulging an interest in criminology and practical forensics dating back to the unsolved murder of a young classmate over a decade before. Each time I'd visited, he was using the laptop I'd provided him with to access papers on poisons, search the records of suspicious deaths in the past half-century, download material on applied abnormal psychology. He showed a special interest in sociopathy. Two months into his treatment he informed me earnestly that he was himself a sociopath.  
  
The statement was absurd. My brother is, as I have said, emotive, sensitive, motivated by a strong impulse toward justice, dangerously quick to warm toward anyone who shows him kindness, with an instinctive need for connection. A sociopath is by definition undesirous of such connections and incapable of morality. I did not understand at first. My cautious questions (I had to be extraordinarily careful with him; one wrong word and he would withdraw from me entirely) led me to realize it was easier for him to absorb his former classmates' treatment if he believed them correct in their conception of him. They had despised him; thought him arrogant because of his confidence in his mental abilities, antisocial, since he did not know how to form friendships, and incapable of sympathy because of his frank analysis of their behaviors. I realized Victor must have agreed with them at the end. And Sherlock had decided he was the unfeeling aberrant they believed him to be.

I do not in fact care much what the world at large feels about me. Caring is not an advantage; it makes me no more comprehensible to them than they are to me. Caring is what put my brother in that facility, so little as I liked his self-definition, I argued with it only briefly. If he wished to be a sociopath to make sense of how badly he'd been misused by them, I would allow him that protection.

He returned to complete his degree under my discreet observation, made possible (unknown to him) by a camera in his room and a device on his phone; taking on double the ordinary coursework in order to graduate with his class. He kept to himself.  
  
After graduation I obtained him a position in the agency. If criminal psychology and forensics had helped him focus his thoughts, we would put his interest to use. He did well at the beginning--was chosen, straight out of training, for a position in Florida, assisting in groundwork involved in analysis of the drug trade through the delta. We had an agreement with the Americans; our loan of him and two other agents trained in interpersonal psychology would be repaid with development of our technological capabilities in London. His role in the arrest of the individual known to the two of us now, through an unexpected series of developments, as "Mrs. Hudson's dead husband" was a success for the agency. It earned him some mild attention. On his return to London he was slated for a promotion.

He came back changed. As I said, he is no true sociopath. But he seemed to have taken the profile to heart while he was away. He went over quiet, and angry, but (I thought) still honest; he came back bright and brittle and deceptive, resentful of command. He wanted none of my company; rejected my advice out of hand. His decisions had changed; he seemed incapable of moderation, unconscious of risk. He was contemptuous of our authority, as though rules and procedures were for lesser men than he. He seemed to have forgotten the meaning of consideration. I could not recognize him.

In short order, he antagonized people whose good opinion he could ill afford to lose. He took the resulting reprimands like personal insults. The skills of deduction I taught him had turned into a form of psychological weaponry for him, a way to keep others at bay, expose them and cut them down. My intellectual capacities are reserved for functional use. His became defensive.

His promotion was put on hold.

When he relapsed, I failed to realize. I don't know if it had already happened in America, away from my supervision, or if it began on his return as a way to cope with the sudden shift back to headquarters. In the end, he was exposed by accident, off hours. Sherlock came across an investigation in progress, headed by Scotland Yard, and stopped to watch the forensics team at work. Something he saw struck him as wrong. He walked into the middle of the restricted area and began shouting about the way it ought to be done. He was handcuffed for interfering with an investigation. He became belligerent. At some point, someone realized he was high.

They called me. He volunteered my number when they asked who they could contact, which surprised me far more than his having walked into an active investigation and attempted to take it over. At that point I was anticipating some final disaster of the kind. The news that he was using stimulants was a shock, however. And then on my arrival I was met with the news that he'd pickpocketed a Swiss knife from the DI and attempted to slit his wrists.

The Detective Inspector talked to me in person; he was very generous. He told me my brother was stable and that he'd held off on initiating anything beyond an emergency assessment. He asked if Sherlock had done anything of the kind previously, if there was anywhere he could be taken for care. I mentioned the facility he'd recovered in before. He offered to let the potentially criminal aspects of the incident drop if I took him directly into treatment, which I was of course eager to do. It was highly irregular.

I went to see him before he was transferred and could find nothing to say.

I had the room the program assigned him equipped with a camera and a live feed. By then I had a measure of liberty in such decisions. I could not justify having the stream watched continually, but we installed sensors on the door frame to flag video taken from the moment the door opened to admit someone until the moment it closed behind them. My assistant was instructed review these fragments and to bring footage of any outside visitors to my attention.

The DI whose investigation he'd breached went to see him three weeks later. I had not expected this. The tape shows him hesitating just inside the door while my brother lies unmoving on his bed.

DI: Sherlock, it's Greg Lestrade.

S: I know.

DI: How are you doing?

There follows two minutes of unprovoked, vicious invective from my brother, directed at the intelligence of the London police force in general and the Inspector's team in particular. He also elaborates on the unlikelihood of Lestrade's continuing employment at Scotland Yard, given his exceptional incompetence. Lestrade stands quietly through all of this.

DI: Are you finished? Because I came to tell you you were right.

S: Excuse me?

DI: You were right, my team was mucking it up. You saw what they missed.

Sherlock lies silent, possibly stunned by the statement, as I was, on reviewing the footage. The Inspector proceeds to sit down beside him on the bed and lay out the case files for the investigation Sherlock had breached.

DI: You want to go over it with me? Help me figure this out.

Sherlock sits up and does so, with an unfeigned directness I had not seen from him in some time. Eventually Lestrade regathers the papers and stands.

DI: Next week, then?

S: All right.

The DI leaves. The flagged section of the feed ends there.

After that, naturally, I had to go and speak with Lestrade. Our conversation took some time and a few false starts on either side--the Inspector assuming that he was in trouble with MI6 for having visited an agent, and I concerned that he had an ulterior motive in involving Sherlock further in an investigation wherein he had no legitimate concern. In the end we came to an understanding, which was that Lestrade had lost several friends on the force to various forms of narcotics and intoxicants and felt a sense of concern regarding Sherlock which was more or less altruistic. He also truly seemed to believe Sherlock could help his department. Thinking of Sherlock's sudden earnestness in dealing with his case, I found I agreed.

Footage from his next several visits show Lestrade kept strictly to business. Cases were discussed; emails and photographic evidence were shared, files opened. I recognized that much of what he was doing was probably illegal, certainly unorthodox. But during their interactions Sherlock appeared fascinated, focused, and, increasingly, relaxed.

One incident several months in stands out among the recordings. I had not seen my brother express grief in years. If Lestrade hadn't gone to see him when he did, I would never have known. The footage, set aside for me by my assistant, shows Lestrade entering with a box of evidence. Sherlock sits slumped on the bed, his face in his hands. He doesn't look up.

Lestrade stands watching him. He doesn't ask if Sherlock is all right. Neither does he turn around and leave. It becomes clear that Sherlock is weeping. Lestrade sets the box down by the foot of the bed and pulls out Sherlock's desk chair; sits down in it. There are about five minutes of complete silence while Sherlock cries.

S: I can't stop.

L: Happens sometimes when your brain's coming down from the chemicals. It'll even out.

S: It's gone on an hour. I can't stop.

L: Feel like it's hard to breathe?

S: Yes.

L: All right. I've got some water here. Try that for a start.

Lestrade gives Sherlock a bottle of water. Sherlock drinks it slowly.

L: Better, yeah?

Sherlock nods.

S: I don't know what I'm going to do.

L: When you get done here?

S: Hm. Yes.

L: Do you want to go back to the agency?

S: God, no. Under his shadow? I can't--I'm not like him, I can't live like that.

L: All right, then. What do you want to do?

Sherlock wipes his eyes with his hands and straightens.

S: What do you mean? I've got to go back, they got me out of trouble. They put me in here.

L: No, mate. Your brother and I put you in here, they had nothing to do with it.

S: Why?

L: We thought we might lose you. I didn't think we could afford to.

Sherlock makes a soft sound. He shakes his head.

S: He's embarrassed by me. I'm an embarrassment.

L: Sherlock, I have no idea what goes on in your brother's mind. But I saw his face when I told him you'd stolen my knife to off yourself. He can't afford to lose you either, mate.

Sherlock puts his head in his hands again. Lestrade waits.

L: If you'd like, we could continue with this. This thing we've been doing. It's been pretty good for us.

Sherlock's hands drop from his face but he doesn't look up.

S: I can't join the police. I can't--I don't do well with authority.

L: Never said you have to join up. We can do it on a sort of contractual basis, yeah? I'll bring you cases, you do what you do. Benefits everyone.

S: I could do that.

L: That's a relief. Given our general incompetence.

Sherlock raises his head.

S: You're right. You need me.

L: Yeah, mate. We need you.

S: What do you have for me today, then?

Lestrade pulls the box over, sits beside Sherlock on the bed and begins to show him the contents. When he stands to go, he offers his hand. Sherlock shakes it.

L: Next week, then?

S: Next week. Lestrade. Thank you.

The flagged section ends.

 

Sherlock was released from the facility after a year in the program. He's remained clean and sober since, as far as I can tell. I do keep a very close eye on him. Lestrade brings him casework, invites him onto crime scenes. He terrorizes Lestrade's team and ignores every possible point of protocol in dealing with evidence. He takes each investigation they give him access to wildly off course. Every time he's proved right. He's exceptionally good at what he does. He has expressed no interest in returning to MI6, nor is he responsive to my attempts at offering direction.

After rehab, he moved into rooms I chose for him and lived there for approximately three weeks. Then we intercepted his mail forwarding request, and surveillance records showed Martha Hudson, back in London after the debacle in Florida, had gained a new tenant in her upstairs flat. He's filled the place with a combination of lab equipment, sheet music, skulls (human and bison) and biological samples, Elle and Vogue and Stevenson and Keats, stolen evidence, and current copies of every newspaper sold in London. He plays his violin at night and refuses to take my calls. He's recently returned to biochemical experimentation in Bart's laboratory. A pathologist has given him access to their corpses. I can't imagine what she's thinking.

He's also found a flatmate. John Watson is an anomaly. He has an average intellect. He's a retired soldier and a GP. Middle class upbringing, one sister, both parents deceased. His primary personal activities are football nights at the pub, paperback thrillers and popular movies. He is as ordinary, on the surface, as any man can be, and yet his defining characteristic has proven to be an unswerving, adoring, bullheaded loyalty to my extraordinary brother. He follows him without question into the fray, defends him very capably against all comers, including me.

He could be the making of my brother, or make him worse than ever.

I've no idea if he's aware of my brother's feelings. I don't know if he'd return them. I'm not sure Sherlock himself is aware of the extent of the trouble he is in.

My brother fell in love for the second time at thirty years of age.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Two Of Us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14509119) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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